| Add rural Texans to the list of constituents Rick Perry has royally screwed with his veto spree as of late. With his veto of HB 3485, Perry prevented hospitals in rural counties with less than 50,000 residents from hiring doctors. This will prevent rural Texans from receiving the medical care they need. The veto comes at a time when Texas ranks among the worst states in the country for access to medical care, especially emergency care.
Perry claims he vetoed it because it undermined some of the tort reform of past sessions to limit the amount of liability and malpractice lawsuit settlements. So while he talks a good game about caring about rural Texans' access to care, he isn't allowing the Legislature to make a big step towards improving it.
Some of his fellow Republicans are speaking out against this latest veto, including the very conservative Warren Chisum, who represents 18 panhandle counties. From Lubbock Online (escalating levels of emphasis mine):
Chisum was unhappy with the governor's veto of HB 3485 because 114 of the 254 counties in the state are medically underserved, including 27 in West Texas that do not have even a single physician.
"I am disappointed because we need to get more doctors and this bill would have helped us tremendously to accomplish that," Chisum said. "But we'll try again in the next session" in 2011.
27 counties in West Texas don't have a single damn doctor in them, but Perry's more concerned about keeping lawsuit settlements low. Unbelievable. It never ceases to amaze me that people voted for this buffoon, and makes me all the more convinced that a strong Democrat can beat Perry should he out-smear KBH in their impending primary.
Meanwhile, in case you're keeping track of Perry's veto-palooza, he also nixed a safe-passing bill for vulnerable road users, a bill to help expand pre-K, and a bill to recycle TV's.
So many of these measures are the result of years and years of work by citizen groups and legislators, often working hard to find bipartisan agreement, to make laws that will make Texas better. And along comes Governor Rick Perry, laying all of that work to waste. |
